Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Democracy’s Debunking

From the department of "No Great Loss Without Some Small Gain": perhaps Leviathan’s $700-billion bail-out and nationalization of the economy will finally awaken Americans to the fact that we live in a dictatorship, not a democracy.

But then along comes the bail-out, and Baa Baa suddenly, overwhelmingly objects. "Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, has received nearly 17,000 e-mail messages, nearly all opposed to the bailout...," according to the New York Times. "Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said he had been getting 2,000 e-mail messages and telephone calls a day, roughly 95 percent opposed." And Republicans are hearing "much the same." Meanwhile, Baa Baa actually forsook his TV, staggered off his couch, and took to the streets, with 200 protests scheduled nationwide last Thursday.

You might suppose such intense opposition would send elected criminals scurrying back to their holes. Certainly politicians who live or die by the people’s will must abandon anything this vehemently, virulently vetoed. But no. Even as protestors demonstrated and phones in Congressional offices rang off the hooks, Our Masters conspired at the White House. They are utterly, shockingly oblivious to the serfs’ displeasure.

As is the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Christopher Dodge – sorry, Dodd (D-CT). "We’ve reached a fundamental agreement on a set of principles," he lied. Who you fooling, Dodge? You wouldn’t know a principle if it smacked you upside the head. Nevertheless, another of Our Masters swore to Dodge’s whopper. "I now expect we will indeed have a package that can pass the House, pass the Senate, and be signed by the president," fibbed Sen. Robert "Robber" Bennett (R-UT). Seems our fury didn’t so much as dent either cretin’s cranium. How could it? – $165,400 and $107,999 respectively in "campaign contributions" from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy impenetrable helmets. Meanwhile, Dodge, Robber, and their accomplices worked over the weekend lest any of us vassals retain a dime after bailing out Wall Street: they spent another $634 billion of our money when they passed a "sprawling spending bill...to keep the government operating beyond the current budget year."

Over in the House of Reprehensibles, Barney Frank (D-MA) disdains not only Baa Baa’s preferences but his intelligence, too: "I'm convinced that by Sunday we will have an agreement that people can understand on this bill." Yo, Frankie-poo: the problem isn’t that "people" don’t understand; it’s that we understand too well.

We find the same imperious disregard for the electorate’s wishes on other issues as well. For example, term limits, which New York City’s residents have twice supported at the polling booth. But it’s been 12 years since we last voted to throw the bums out, so it’s time for another attempt at circumventing our will: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and much of the City Council will otherwise find themselves hunting honest work when their terms expire in 2010. Ah, but it’s not their own interests that concern them. No, sirree: as always, the tyrants have our good at heart. G. Oliver Koppell, a Democrat from the Bronx, told the New York Times that term limits "rob the public of a choice." He mused, "If one looks at members of the City Council,…some of the most creative served for 20 years." Creative, huh? I’d like to see a non-Council thief try that: "Ya honor, gimme a break, I was just bein’ creative."

Also scorning our screaming is that über-bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One of its pet schemes is a national ID card. Coincidentally, that’s the only totalitarian totem that Americans adamantly reject. Whatever else they tolerate from Big Brother – public schools, checkpoints, wiretapping, cops running rampant, torture – they consistently oppose a national ID. And have for decades.

That doesn’t faze the DHS. Brandishing the REAL ID Act, it’s spent the last 3 years coercing the states to reformulate their driver’s licenses according to its whims. Among other horrors, those whims include linking the states' databases to a federal one as well as RFID chips to track our movements. (N.B. DHS currently denies plans to incorporate RFID; it also employs the biggest collection of liars ever assembled outside Congress.) This has sparked the most widespread rebellion since 1861, with 27 states passing resolutions or even laws against REAL ID.

Again, we might expect bureaucrats in an alleged democracy to bow to the will of the people. And again, we are disillusioned. Indeed, the fiercer the opposition, the harder DHS rams REAL ID down Baa Baa’s throat. Michael Chertoff, the agency’s head honcho, not only pits citizens from defiant states against their governments, he threatens them with sexual assault: "Chertoff said… [they’ll] have to use a passport or certain types of federal border-crossing cards if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security. ‘The last thing I want to do is punish citizens of a state who would love to have a REAL ID license but can't get one,’ Chertoff said." But his regret didn’t keep him from gloating about the chance to play God: REAL ID "is a great teaching moment on the challenges of really reconfiguring a society…"

Admit it, Baa Baa: your democracy is a dictatorship. And the wolves are circling.

September 30, 2008

Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

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